Patisserie II: Plated Desserts Wrap Up
After the break, we had one more week of plated desserts, and I was quite happy with what we made. Our Chef Instructor used to be the Pastry Chef at The French Laundry, so many recipes were out of that repertoire. When I first bought TFL Cookbook, there were many desserts that I wanted to make from it, so it was fun to see them come to life around me in the school’s kitchen.
L’il Floating Islands. This was made with a creme anglaise with maple sugar substituted for regular sugar, swiss meringues baked in milk until firm to the touch, and sauteed bacon. To make the eggshell cups, you saw off the top 1/3 or so of a lengthwise egg, and carefully remove the membrane within (it helps to keep the shell underwater while doing so) and then wash and dry them. It was hard to get the edges smooth and even, though, without gradually tearing the whole shell down. It takes a very light touch.
And they were amazing — smooth… maple-y sweet.. with soft meringue… and the crunchy and salty bacon. Very refreshing. I could have eaten a whole bowlful, one eggshell at a time.
We were also asked to come up with a small-bite dessert based on a photo of a soup with a skewer of its deconstructed ingredients balanced on top of it. Our group came up with the Snickers Shooter. Originally, I had the Caramel Soup from Cyrus in mind, and since I always thought that it would have been better as a small serving, I wanted to make it in something like a shot glass. But a lack of popping corn kernels led us to consider other ingredients, and we decided to put nougat ice cream (vanilla base with honey and an infusion of peanuts) in a very small cup, put a small lattice of chocolate piped from a paper cone on top, top that with salted honey roasted peanuts, and then pour caramel sauce over it all, so that the lattice would melt and it would be like a shot of dessert soup. I loved the way it tasted (like a Snickers), and it had a nice mix of textures and temperatures. The only problem was that it could not be taken as a shot — no matter how long you tilted the cup and your head back– but eating it with a spoon was fine.
Red Sugar Beet Ice Cream with a Bittersweet Chocolate Cake and Candied Walnuts. The cake also had beet juice in it, just like in the olden days, so a forkful of this dessert meant a mouthful of beet. I like beets, so I happy with it and even happier that this was better than my beet quickbread — I knew beet cake could work somehow. The beet chips were also very good — after being sliced thin on the meat slicer, they were dredged in flour, deep-fried at 300F, and seasoned with conf sugar and salt.
We also tried to make a Goat Cheese-Thyme Gelato to pair with the beet ice cream, but no matter how we tried to get rid of the chalkiness and iciness, it just wouldn’t work (though I’ve since found recipes online that look promising…). The taste of it was fantastic, though. It couldn’t be served to paying customers, of course, but I couldn’t stop taking little bites. And by the way, I realize that once you come up with pairing goat cheese-thyme gelato with beet ice cream, you’ve probably passed a very special culinary point of no return.
Coconut Cake with Roasted Pineapple, Coconut Cream, Royal Icing Cookie, and Passionfruit Sauce (lemon curd, passionfruit puree, vanilla sauce). This picture was taken in a hurry before all of the elements were added, but I’m okay with that, because in truth, what I would really want a picture of is the cake alone by itself, because it was so light and good and flavorful that I’d be happiest eating it plain. It has coconut milk mixed into it, and we used Rose Levy Beranbaum’s technique of mixing the dry ingredients first and then adding the wet.
Our poor, disturbed Strawberry Sorbet Shortcake with Creme Fraiche Sauce. If you turn to page 277 in TFL cookbook, you’ll see how this should really look. We made strawberry sorbet and strawberry ice cream, but we couldn’t quite get both to fit under the rather small biscuit and balance on the diced strawberries within. And then it all melted. It tasted great, though.
We had 4 days of plated desserts that week, and then the 5th day was our very own Aluminum Chef Competition (because we’re not quite at Iron level yet…). More on that soon.
